The Adventure Company's imported version of Fenimore Fillmore: The Westerner, under the moniker of Wanted: A Wild West Adventure, is a solid point-and-click adventure game affair, offering a style of gameplay that hearkens back to the heyday of Sierra's and Lucas Arts' popular adventure games. Sure, some of the game's magic was lost in translation (we'll talk about that more later) and some of the ways the game handles interaction (both manipulation and perspective) could use some work, but overall Wanted is a fun game. With that said, let's get into the heart of what Wanted is all about.

Wanted tells the story of Fenimore Fillmore as he stumbles into a tough situation where towns folks are being forced sell their land to an evil and wealthy rancher named John Starek. During the course of talking with the locals, falling in love, partaking in a handful of shooting challenges, getting your guns back from a youngster that "borrowed them" and riding his horse, Fenimore Fillmore walks (and sometimes stumbles) towards becoming the greatest hero the town has ever known. During the course of the game players will interact with 30 interesting and bizarre characters, collect over 80 inventory objects and encounter countless strange situations.

Fillmore is a somewhat bumbling cowboy, a slight romantic, though not dim witted or unskilled with a six shooter. He's the usual reluctant hero you find in some adventure stories, but he's not as inept as characters found in those types of plotlines usually are. With that kind of mind-set in mind, Fillmore finds himself bunking with a local ranch owning family, but before he can decide what he wants to do, the little rascal of the story swipes his gun and heads off to school. Thus begins the adventure of Fillmore. From a small ranch bedroom to the evil rancher's homestead Fillmore will be challenged to figure out the dirty little details of why John Starek is being so ruthless to his own people.

Beyond the backstory, Wanted fills itself out with classic point and click adventure gameplay along with a few arcade sequences that may turn off hardcore adventure gamers. The game uses a Sierra style inventory system whereby players highlight an item and try to "use" it on another object in the world. For instance, players might pick up a bucket and then use it on a water pump, then use that bucket of water to irrigate some crops. That part of the game's equation works pretty well overall, and players will find themselves gathering a lot of items to use one more stationary objects in the world.

Where the game loses some credibility amongst adventure gamers is in its action and arcade sequences. Some of these exercises may very well be considered a death knell for continuing the adventure; One such sequences involves a first-person shooter shoot-out that is highly arcade in nature; while another, an insult drinking game challenges players to fire off insults while drinking root beer. Some of the game's charm is also lost in its humor and translation. The humor in game ranges from situational humor to conversational humor that doesn't always come off as particularly funny. Whether that is because it was originally designed for a European audience or not remains to be seen. Some will find the humor to be fun, while others might find it to be lame - humor, like a lot of things - is in the eye of the beholder.

The other thing that is a bit bothersome is the delivery of voice acting in the game. The U.S. version uses some over-the-top acting that borders on being agitating. Not all of the voice acting is like that but some of it is delivered in a way that just doesn't match the expressions or visual style of the characters in the game.

There are a lot of good things about the game, and we don't want to give the impression that Wanted is bad. The inventory system is pretty cool, many of the game's characters are interesting, the adventure plotline is pretty solid, and the humor works at least half of the time in the game. The game also offers a great throw-back kind of style to the good old days of Sierra's and Lucas Arts' adventure titles.

The bottom line is that Wanted is a good game for point and click adventure game fans with a few caveats against the action and arcade sequences we mentioned earlier. If players can get by those gameplay elements and a few small irritating moments with the voice work, then it is sure to please fans of countless classic point and click adventure games from Escape from Monkey Island to Leisure Suit Larry (without the raunchy humor of course). You can learn more about the game directly from its official site .